Part 17 (1/2)
”Alida,” said I, ”at Aramon all the flowers are out, and the broom runs along the river banks like a mile-wide flame of fire. Everywhere is yellow in spring, ranunculus, b.u.t.tercups, celandine, and the yellow wallflowers sprouting among all the old walls of Gobelet. When will you come and see them?”
Alida went prettily to Linn and kissed her. Then she put her arms about Keller without saying anything. The game was won. No more remained but to make the arrangements.
”As soon as these two dear people will let me!” she said.
Bless her! She might have started next morning if she had been set upon the matter! That is, so far as Keller and Linn were concerned.
Afterwards while we were walking home Hugh looked edgeways at me.
”Angus,” said he gravely, ”I should not like to have your responsibility. Are you sure that she will take to the family at Chateau Schneider? Or they to her? We are rather a handful, you know, and she--well, she is not exactly ordinary.”
”As to that I don't know,” I said sharply, for I did not like to hear my darling project decried or even suspected, ”and what is more, I don't care. The garden and the Garden Cottage at Gobelet are large enough and safe enough.”
”Pardon,” he retorted, more unpleasantly than he had ever spoken to me.
”I was under the impression that Alida was going to Aramon for society.”
”Well, and suppose she finds it without crossing the bridge--what then?”
”Oh, nothing,” he said, ”I was only considering what you meant to do for yourself in the way of a career!”
CHAPTER XIX
KELLER BEY COMES TO ARAMON
Keller Bey came to Aramon ten days after the time of our return. Before letting us go Alida decided that I must write her every day, and Hugh once a week. She had never seen a line from either, but she judged from our faculty of conversation--often quite a false test, as witness Cowper and Gray.
For the details of that first visit of Keller to Aramon I must have recourse to the daily letters which I wrote at that time to Alida.
_Monday, February_--, 1871.
”n.o.bLE AND SWEET,--
”The Bey came last night into the station of Aramon-les-Ateliers, where Hugh and I met him. A manifestation of the Internationale was crowding the platform to welcome some delegate who was to address the companions in their hall. I could see the old soldier quiver at the sight of the red flags they carried. If the St. Andre diligence had not been waiting at the station portico, I hardly think we could have persuaded him to go on. Any opposition to the tricolour, which he hates with the hatred of an old Atlas fighter, appears to excite him. We shall have trouble with him at Aramon if events thicken as they seem to be doing.
”But for the time being, everything marched as to music. The Bey was installed beside me, and Hugh very considerately took his leave. I am sending him over a message to-day telling him how matters fell out. The view from the bridge enchanted Keller. Aramon the Elder was rich with sunset glow--'a rose-red city half as old as time,' with the tall Montmorency keep standing up from its rock as firm and proud as the day it was finished five centuries ago.
”He asked concerning the fort on the top, and gloom overspread his face when he heard that St. Andre had long been a famous _lycee_. I think he feared the neighbourhood of hosts of Jesuits. But I tranquillised his mind, telling him that he would find Professor Renard as free a thinker and as tolerant a listener as even my father.
”Before long we stopped at the gate of Gobelet, and to my astonishment and delight my father opened it in person. He had even made toilet to the extent of a rough pilot suit and a pair of patent leather slippers.
”Keller instinctively saluted as my father held out his hand. He seemed unaccountably shy of taking it, but at last he did and even shook it warmly if somewhat jerkily, 'after the English fas.h.i.+on' as he was eager to inform me afterwards--making a useful comparison of French and English characteristics between 'serrer la main' and hand-shaking.
”I let the old gentlemen go on by themselves, sure that they would thus become better friends, and if you will believe me, Alida, they were not at the corner of the path leading to the Garden Cottage before they were deep in Arabic, and the next thing I knew was my father leading the Bey prisoner through the open windows of his study that he might show him some singular and infinitely precious ma.n.u.script.
”Well, I left them till supper time. We are simple folk and sup early. Then I went into the study, where I had some difficulty in awakening them to a world where people washed hands before eating and drinking.
”'Well, we must thresh that out again,' I heard my father say, and I am sure he never showed himself so much interested by any of my performances, not even when I brought home the gold medal for the first place in the _baccalaureat_. They could hardly let each other go, and if you, Alida, were present at that moment in the mind of the Bey, you were relegated to some distant hinterland, by me unexplored.
”At supper, before Saunders McKie and the domestics I steered my barque with care. For the ears of Saunders were growing long and lop like a rabbit's, with sheer intensity of listening. Once or twice things became a little sultry, as when the Bey described the bannered procession he had seen at the station.